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Cora (Earth-01)
Lady Cora, known as the Queen of Hearts, was the mother of the Wicked Witch of the West, the twin siblings Regina and Rex. History Early Life Cora was born to miller and his wife, who is said to have secretly been a witch. While Cora was still an infant, her mother was killed under as yet unrevealed circumstances, and her father became an alcoholic to cope with the loss of his wife. As a child, Cora was forced to work in the mill all day, wearing nothing but rags. This caused her to grow bitter at her lot in life and quite envious of the trappings of high society. When she was sixteen, Cora had an illicit affair with with Prince Magnus, the spoiled, arrogant heir to the throne of the Silver Realm. While at first hesitant to bed a man already betrothed at birth to a young noblewoman named Grace, Wendell proposed to Cora with a straw ring and promised to replace it with a gold one after he broke off his engagement to be with Cora. A naive Cora accepted his advances, and became pregnant with his child. After Cora revealed to the nobleman that she was pregnant, he abandoned her and went back to his kingdom to go through with his engagement to Lady Grace. Anguished by her lover’s betrayal, the young Cora abandoned this child at the footsteps of a nunnery in the next village over, hoping to still succeed in her effort to marry into wealth and power. To Cora's shock, the whole village was soon destroyed by a cyclone, however, unbeknownst to her, her child was safely transported to the O.Z. (Outer Zone). Meeting Rumplestiltskin When Cora was eighteen, her father drank himself to a stupor and she was forced to make the supply deliveries to the region’s monarchy. While unloading her flour, Cora overheard that a birthday ball for the king's youngest son would be held as an opportunity for the king to sell his son to a wealthy bride. Lady Grace, who was visiting the kingdom in an effort to forge a political alliance and extend a personal invitation to her upcoming wedding to Prince Wendell, noticed Cora eavesdropping. Well aware of Cora and Wendell's past affair, a spiteful Grace tripped Cora while she carried two heavy bags of flour. Cora was then forced to kneel and apologize to Grace by the king, who then refused to pay Cora for her services. Later that evening, Cora discovered her mother’s legacy to her: a chest containing herbs, medicines, and objects said to have magical powers. It was on discovering the chest that Cora decided that her mother must have been a witch. She saw these artifacts as her means to gaining power, and began learning their uses. In an effort to attend the upcoming masked ball being held, Cora experimented in summoning a demon. She succeeded in bringing the powerful entity known as the Dark One to Earth from his mirror prison without realizing he would not be under her control. Despite asking who he is, the Dark One refused to reveal his true name to Cora, warning her that those who learned it suffered a terrible fate. Regardless, the Dark One was grateful for being freed, and he magically garbed Cora in fine clothes and provided a forged invitation into the castle. The Dark One quickly vanished, and Cora snuck into the masked ball to win the prince's favor. Cora quickly wooed the prince, but before she could slip him a love potion to make him her thrall, the king interrupted their conversation. Having recognized Cora, the king made it clear that he believed him and his family superior to her, despite his kingdom's financial woes, and that she had nothing to offer him. Cora untruthfully boasted that she could turn straw to gold, but would deny the king this gift because of his insults. The king presented her to the ball goers with her claim. When asked to demonstrate, Cora nervously claimed she needed time to prepare, so the king had her imprisoned in a tower room filled with straw and a spinning wheel, and demanded she spin the straw into gold by morning; should she succeeded she could marry the prince, but if she failed she would be executed. When Cora considered jumping from the tower window, the Dark One appeared, having watched her progress for some time. He demonstrated that he could spin straw into gold, and offered to do so in exchange for Cora's first-born child, citing only that "she is very important" in the future he has seen. Intrigued, Cora instead asked the Dark One to teach her how to spin straw into gold herself; to which he agreed and she signed his contract. The Dark One taught Cora to draw her mystic strength from the anger she felt towards the nobles who either lied or humiliated her, and she learned to successfully spin straw into gold. Demonstrating this to the nobles the next morning, Cora is offered the prince's hand in marriage and she accepted. While wedding preparations were being made, Cora underwent training in sorcery under the tutelage of the Dark One and the two became romantically involved. On the eve of her wedding, Cora met the Dark One in the woods at his remote mountain cottage and shared her doubts about marrying the prince: he is fifth in line for the throne and the kingdom itself is quite small. She decided that she would prefer to run away with the Dark One. The Dark One agreed to wed Cora himself and amended his contract with her so that she owed him his child. Before eloping, Cora asked the Dark One to teach her how to take a heart, so that she can kill the king. Pleased with her progress, the Dark One revealed to her his true name was Rumplestiltskin. That night, Cora confronted the king and he revealed that he knew of her relationship with Rumplestiltskin; telling her that "love is weakness," he laid out her choice between love and power. Taking the message to heart, Cora performed a magical procedure to remover her own heart, rendering her invulnerable and emotionless. Later, Rumplestiltskin appeared to Cora and she informed him that she did not take the king's heart, and that she would wed the prince instead of running away with Rumplestiltskin. Angered, Rumplestiltskin tries to invoke their contract, but Cora reminded him that he only has a claim on his own child, which she will never bear. To prevent the threat that Rumplestiltskin posed, Cora invoked his true name to force him back into his mirror prison and used magic to take possession of it. Motherhood After Cora married the prince, she was still unsatisfied with her position. She soon learned that Magnus and Grace ascended the throne of their kingdom and had a son named Magnus together. To destroy Magnus and Grace's lineage and attain vengeance, Cora plotted to birth a daughter whom she marry off to Magnus and act as the power behind the throne. The following year, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, whom she named Rex and Regina. In raising her children, Cora focused her attention on grooming Regina to be a queen. When her children showed signs of magical abilities, Cora cast a spell on them to conceal their their powers as much as possible; she presumed her children would act against her with such power, and this stunted their inherent magical capabilities. After fourteen years, her husband had grown suspicious of her magical powers and made plans to divorce Cora and keep their children. Cora used dark magic to kill her husband. The kingdom presumed he was killed in a freak accident and Cora assumed full control over his wealth and estate which overlooked a magnificent apple orchard. When Regina had finally come of age, Cora cloaked herself in the guise of an old woman and infiltrated the castle of the Silver Realm as a handmaiden to Queen Grace, and gradually gained their trust and access to all three members of the royal family. Soon she began slowly poisoning King Wendell and Queen Grace over the course of sixteen months until they died in their sleep. The kingdom presumed them stricken by a mysterious illness and Prince Magnus prematurely ascended the throne. Before she could enact her plan to place Regina on the throne, however, Regina managed to steal one of Cora's tomes while she carried on her ruse as a handmaiden to Queen Grace. Having learned Cora was a witch and her plans to rule the Silver Realm herself, Regina and Rex lured Cora into a trap and pushed her through the magic looking-glass, banishing her to an extra-dimensional realm the natives called Underland. Reign as the Queen of Hearts Using magic, Cora tore out the heart of the King of Hearts and forced him to make her his queen consort. Tearing out the hearts of the king's personal guard, Cora took advantage of the forces at her disposal and searched for a method to escape back to the Hesse. She was a ruthless ruler because of her undesired circumstances, often sentencing those who crossed her to decapitation. However, the King of Hearts would often secretly order the guards to spare any person they could. Within the year, Cora's royal court held a concert that the Mad Hatter sang at. Annoyed by the Mad Hatter's silliness and for wasting her time, Cora ordered the guards to behead him after he made jokes at her expense. The Hatter escaped, but a being whom refereed to himself as Time encountered the Hatter and the March Hare while searching for a young girl named Alice Liddell, who stole his Chronospehere, a time-traveling device. Growing annoyed with their time related questions and puns, Time placed the Hatter and the March Hare in a time loop that would reset after one minute, forcing the two to return to their seats whenever they left the table. Time constructed the loop so that it would only be broken after they met Alice Liddell, which does not occur until her first arrival in Underland years later. Eventually, Cora met Alice after Cora ordered a trio of guards to be killed because a white rose tree was planted instead of a red one. The guards tried to hide the mistake by painting the roses red, and Alice helped them. When it was time for them to be executed, Alice hid them in a large flower pot and the executioner lied about the guards being killed. Later that day, Cora grew increasingly interested in Alice after discovering she was from another world and Cora held a large croquet game where flamingos were used as mallets, hedgehogs as the balls, and guards were the hoops. The guards, in fear of being decapitated, let only Cora score, but she reprimanded them as she wanted to entertain Alice so as to get her to reveal how she came to Underland in the hopes of using this to escape. When Alice claimed ignorance, Cora placed Alice's newly made friend, the Knave of Hearts, on trial for allegedly stealing tarts. During the trial, Cora used a "sentence before verdict" type of court system. Cora had the Duchess' cook and the Mad Hatter interviewed before getting to Alice. Cora whispered to the young girl that if she could not get her out of Underland, then the Knave would be executed. An infuriated Alice then consumed a magic mushroom which made her giant. Trying to intimidate Cora, Alice threatened Cora and her armed guard. Annoyed, Cora ordered her guards to swarm at Alice, and she used magic to return Alice to her normal size. However, Alice managed to flee the trial and return back to her world through the same rabbit hole that brought her to Underland. To Cora's dismay, the hole immediately closed after Alice went through it. The Exodus A few years later, her world was invaded by the Empire and her husband perished in the onslaught. Her army was quickly defeated in battle and by order of the Empress of the Empire, who was reveled to be her daughter Regina, Cora was sentenced to death. However, as she did not have her heart inside her, she could not be conventionally killed and was able to make it seem as if she had perished. Cora then disguised herself as a solider in the Empire's army and returned to the Hesse at long last, at a point centuries after she had been banished to Underland. However, whereas only a few years had passed for Cora in Underland, it had centuries the Hesse, time having passed more slowly for her there than it did on the Hesse due to Underland's unknown temporal laws. After making her way to the Empire's capital, Cora chose to observe Regina from afar, curious as to what she would do with the Empire and waited until she deemed the proper moment to possess Regina, thereby claiming the Empire for herself. Category:Earth-01